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Monday, July 9, 2012

Review ~ Rock Chick

Rock Chick

By Kristen Ashley

4 of 5 STARS

Indy Savage, cop's daughter, rock chick and used bookstore owner, has been in love with Lee Nightingale, once bad boy, now the man behind Nightingale Investigations, since she was five years old. No matter what ingenious schemes Indy used to capture his attention, Lee never showed an interest and Indy finally gave up. Now Indy's employee, Rosie, has lost a bag of diamonds and bad guys are shooting at him. When Indy gets involved, Lee is forced to help. Complicting matters, Lee has decided he's interested, Indy's decided she's not. But she can't seem to keep Lee out of her life when she's repeatedly stun gunned, kidnapped and there are car bombs exploding (not to mention she's finding dead bodies).

Indy's best bet is to solve the mystery of the diamonds before Lee. Lee's challenge is to keep Indy alive and, at the same time, win back her heart.

It has many references to music as you can guess from the title. I love music so this is always a nice added bonus in fiction. It has sassy girls who aren't young and ditzy by any means but not old and unrelateable. Fun fashion and accessories for Indy and Ally as well as an awesome drag queen neighbor. Awesome humor. Even though the plot contains kidnapping, murder and all around mayhem, the humor keeps it from being too serious without discrediting it altogether. I haven't mentioned all the hot alphas yet have I? No? HOT DAMN! And last but not least, we have Indy, she's all kinds of crazy and fun and I really enjoyed her as the lead character.

Indy Savage is 30 years old and owns a bookstore. She was raised by her father who never remarried after losing Indy's mom at a very young age. We get an idea immediately from the first few paragraphs what it was like growing up for Indy with her father being a cop and all the protective male influences in her life.

Until now, I’ve never been in trouble with the law. It’s cosmically impossible, I’m a cop’s daughter. Cop’s Daughter Karma protects me and seeing as I’m not a drug addict, drug dealer, thief, prostitute, gangster or murderer (all traits that would negate Cop’s Daughter Karma), I’m protected. This isn’t to say I haven’t done stupid things that are not exactly law-abiding, in fact, I’d done a lot of stupid things that are not exactly law-abiding.

She also has her best friend Ally and her whole family that she's been around since birth. Enter Ally's brother Liam "Lee" Nightingale. Indy has been in love with Lee since childhood but he's a badboy and has never reciprocated her advances. What can she do but move on?

Not to mention, Lee went from Bad Boy to Badass in half a decade. By the end of that decade he was Badass Extraordinaire. You didn’t mess with Lee. I may have been a bit of a wild child, but I knew enough about playing with fire and getting burned and Lee Nightingale had gone from a bonfire to a towering fucking inferno in ten years.

So what's a girl to do when getting shot at outside of her bookstore? Police? No, that won't do. It was her barista who was the target for some sketchy reason. She calls her best friend Ally to come to the rescue. I really like Ally. She's funny and a great friend to Indy.

We’re both thirty years old, with Ally two weeks younger than me. We’d be eighty and wearing denim mini-skirts and I’m-with-the-band t-shirts, I foresaw this for our future and even though I thought it was cool, it also kinda scared me.

Soon, with the help from Ally, Indy is getting help with the situation from Lee. This book has a lot of action in it. Things move at a rather rapid pace most of the time though I can say if Lee would have had one more damn person knocking at his door, I would've been pissed. I say this on behalf of Indy. ;)

We have stolen diamonds, dead bodies, car explosions, food fights, handcuffing, kidnapping. Lots happens and Indy just doesn't like to do what she's told. Even if it is from a sexy man she's been crushing on forever and they are finally making headway in their relationship. She fights him at first but it's inevitable.

I explained, “We’re not exactly together and were not, not together. We’re in together-limbo. We’re test-driving together to see if we want to buy it.”

“We go to your Dad’s late, I could convince you to buy it.”

I was pretty certain he was right so, in self-defense, I put my hands against his chest and pushed.

I really love the humor and dialogue in this book. I can't help but give another example.

“They’re on a Lee and Indy Sex Watch."

“Come again?”

“They want to know when we’ve done it.”

Silence. I went on. “If we don’t do it soon, they might force us to at gunpoint.”

“Christ.”

“I know. No pressure though. I told them we’re taking it slow.”

“You have to report in?”

“I kind of feel obliged.”

Overall I loved this book. The humor, the dialogue, the cast of characters, all the sexy alpha men. I mentioned them already right? I really liked Indy and Lee. My only criticism is I think it was a tad too long. But for my only complaint, that's nothing and I plan to continue this series soon as each book focuses on different characters in the same setting.

Holy crap.

His mouth was at my ear.

“I could be on assignment, in a desert as hot as an oven, in a jungle as close as fuck and sometimes I’d get through it dreamin’ of you sayin’ my name like that.”